Nation IN BRIEF : WISCONSIN : FBI to Help Defend Spearfishing Rights

FBI agents and federal marshals will be sent to northern Wisconsin to help local authorities enforce Chippewa Indians’ off-reservation hunting and fishing rights, a sheriff in Madison said. A federal judge issued a final ruling last month in a 16-year-old court battle over the Indians’ right to carry out traditional spearfishing by flashlight soon after the ice breaks up on northern Wisconsin lakes. Whites who fear the practice will ruin sport fishing have staged angry demonstrations that have included rock throwing, racial slurs and hundreds of arrests for disorderly conduct. The spearfishing season runs about four weeks starting in mid-April. The Chippewa’s rights are based on 19th-Century federal treaties that ceded roughly a third of Wisconsin to the government.